How much do different ways of calculating percentiles influence the derived performance indicators? A case study

Michael Schreiber ()
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Michael Schreiber: Institute of Physics, Chemnitz University of Technology

Scientometrics, 2013, vol. 97, issue 3, No 17, 829 pages

Abstract: Abstract Bibliometric indicators can be determined by comparing specific citation records with the percentiles of a reference set. However, there exists an ambiguity in the computation of percentiles because usually a significant number of papers with the same citation count are found at the border between percentile rank classes. The present case study of the citations to the journal Europhysics Letters (EPL) in comparison with all physics papers from the Web of Science shows the deviations which occur due to the different ways of treating the tied papers in the evaluation of the percentage of highly cited publications. A strong bias can occur, if the papers tied at the threshold number of citations are all considered as highly cited or all considered as not highly cited.

Keywords: Citation analysis; Percentiles; Percentile rank classes; Performance evaluation; Highly-cited-publications indicator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-013-0984-x

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